The mental maps of Italian entrepreneurs: a quali-quantitative approach

ABSTRACT

Geographers interested in how entrepreneurs perceive locational environments have studied their mental maps in several European countries, within the theoretical framework provided by behavioral approach. Such studies have typically employed quantitative techniques, but qualitative studies are relatively new to this line of research. In this article, I examine the mental maps of entrepreneurs in Italy by using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods. I present and discuss the qualitative outcomes of this research, focusing in particular on the explanatory location factors and the key influences on the mental maps of entrepreneurs. What emerges is the realization that entrepreneurs are far from being fully rational economic actors, who exploit optimally all information and who are driven only by objective considerations. Rather, their views are also affected by subjective factors, individual’s own insights, commonplaces, stereotypes, and prejudices, particularly with reference to the southern regions of Italy (Mezzogiorno), and of other peripheral areas.

KEYWORDS:

• Mental maps
• Italy
• spatial patterns
• explanatory location factors
• content analysis
• thematic analysis

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, for their revisions and their advice. I am grateful to Norbert Götz and Janne Holmén, Guest Editors of this special issue, and to Steven Schnell, Editor of the Journal of Cultural Geography, whose comments and suggestions much improved this paper as well. Lastly, I thank Niccolò Pieri, who supported me in making the two choropleth maps of Italy (Figures 1 and 2).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dario Musolino is an economic geographer. He is Senior Researcher at CERTeT – Bocconi University, and Contract Professor in International Economics at Aosta Valley University. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), and a M.Sc. in Human Geography Research from the LSE (U.K.).

ORCID

Dario Musolino http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8245-0798

Notes

1 Perception, in more basic terms, regards the sensory input given to an individual by a phenomenon, an object, or a place, while cognition refers to the information, and the knowledge acquired and used by each individual. According to Stern and Krakover, perception concerns the “usually immediate apprehension of environmental information by our senses, while cognition refers to the way this information, once received, is organized in the brain” (1993, p. 131).

2 For a recent application of the concept of sketch maps, see the study conducted within the project “EuroBroadMap – Europe seen from abroad” aimed at analysing the different visions of students concerning Europe in the world (Didelon et al. 2011, Grasland and Beauguitte 2011).

3 The arguments used in this article are based on Musolino (2015).

4 Entrepreneurs had to satisfy three basic criteria, already applied for the other country-level case studies (Meester 2004): (1) being capable to make a well-founded judgment on the locational environments in the study area; (2) having an interest, even hypothetic, to evaluate an alternative location; (3) having the power to take decisions about the location of the plants (that is to say, who can decide about the location of the firm by themselves). The use of these criteria limited the range of sectors and branches part of the research population. For example, firms belonging to sectors with a strong locational constraint, such as activities bound to the land (mining, agriculture, etc.), were kept out, as they do not have any interest in evaluating alternative and different locations, and therefore they do not satisfy the second criteria.

5 These divisions correspond respectively to the NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 levels in Italy, as defined in the Classification of Territorial Units for Statistics by the European Union, the hierarchical system for dividing up the economic territory of the EU [http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Glossary:Nomenclature_of_territorial_units_for_statistics_(NUTS)].

6 See for example Svimez 2011, chapter XI.

7 For relevant studies about the emergence of the Padana region, see, e.g. Bramanti et al. 1992, Turri 2000, OECD 2006.

8 The Padana region in 2015 accounted for 48% of the total GDP and the total value added in Italy (dati.istat.it), and for 43% of firms. The four regions approximately composing Padana region (Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna) were inhabited in 2016 by about 23.5 million people, about 39% of the total Italian population (dati.istat.it).

9 According to the latest data about accessibility at the Nuts3 level in European union (Spiekermann and Wegener 2014), the level of accessibility in the regions in the Padana region is usually over the EU average, and in some cases (for example, Milan, Bologna) it is about 50% higher.

10 Milan accounts for 28% of all foreign-owned firms located in Italy. In terms of employees, it accounts for 33% of all employees in foreign-owned located in Italy (Mutinelli 2017).

11 See for example mechatronics, agri-food (apples, grapes, etc.), building (green building) and the furniture sector.

12 According to Fondazione Transcrime (2013), who defined a synthetic index for measuring the presence of Mafia organizations in Italy at the territorial scale in the period 2000–2011, there are relevant differences among Southern regions. While in Campania, Calabria and Sicily, this index measures 61, 32 and 42; in Basilicata, Abbruzzo, Sardinia and Molise it measures respectively 5, 0.7, 7 and 0.3. As concerns other regions, for example in Lazio it is 17, in Ligura it is 10, and in Piedmont, 6.

13 According to Istat data (dati.istat.it, 2015), in Northern regions college graduates account for 13% of the population older than 15, while in Southern regions, the figure is 11.5%.

14 Many of the cultural and other assets often attributed to Italy as a whole can be found readily throughout the country. As a simple example, properties inscribed on the World Heritage List in Italy (http://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/it), which total 53, are relatively evenly distributed throughout the country in all regions.

15 Such inconsistencies are in fitting with other findings of the gaps between perceptions and reality of regional differences in economic indicators such as GDP per capita, where the perceived North–South gap” is wider than the “real North–South gap.” (Musolino 2015, chapter 6).